


want you back like my boomerang

by orphan_account



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Crushes, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Claire moves into Karen's apartment building and a cut hand turns into a meet cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	want you back like my boomerang

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/gifts).



When Claire came back to Hell’s Kitchen after her time away upstate, she didn’t move back to her old apartment. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was being watched or booby trapped in her absence, and the last thing she needed right now (or ever) was another violent interrogation. Instead, she moved a few blocks west to settle down somewhere that was significantly cheaper anyway. The apartment was kind of a dump when she moved in, but Claire was good at decorating. It didn’t take long for her to make it a home. 

The third night that she was there, someone knocked at her door. Before answering, Claire pocketed some mace and peeked out of the peep hole. Better safe than sorry. However, the person who knocked appeared to just be a thin blonde woman in a floral dress around her age. Unless she had weird superpowers, Claire could definitely take her in a fight.

“Who is it?”

“Hi!” said the woman, voice shaking slightly. “Um, I’m Karen. Sorry to bother you. I’m your new neighbor. I was just wondering if you had any band-aids? I cut my hand while cooking and I don’t seem to have any in the house.”

Claire unlocked, unlatched, and opened the door. The woman in the hallway was scarcely larger than she had been through the peephole and. . .wow. The exact type of woman that Claire always managed to get immediate crushes on. She blinked twice, willing herself not to stare at the woman who certainly was not asking to be ogled at in the pursuit of medical help. 

“Lucky for you that I’m a nurse. I always have bandages,” she said. “Do you need disinfectant too?”

“Please?” said Karen. Claire could see now that the towel Karen had wrapped her hand in was gradually getting soaked with blood.

“You can come in,” said Claire. Karen smiled shyly and entered her home. Claire glanced at her hand for the first time; she had a towel wrapped around it, and blood was beginning to seep through it. “Can I look at that?”

“Uh, sure.” Karen unwrapped her hand, wincing as the towel disturbed the clotting that had already taken place. Gently, Claire cupped the hand in her own, observing the injury. Blood began to well up inside the cut and pool into Karen’s small, delicate hand. 

“That’s a deep cut. Big knife?”

“I was chopping an onion and it slipped.”

“How clean was that towel? Washed recently?” 

Karen grimaced. “I wish the answer was yes but to tell you the truth I have no idea when I washed it last. Life has been. . .busy lately.”

“I understand. Believe me, I’ve seen patients plug up wounds with a lot worse. Sit down on the couch. I’ll take care of it for you.” She grabbed her perpetually stocked first aid kit from the shelf above the stove, and rummaged around it for bandages and peroxide.

Karen sat down on the couch, making sure to pull her dress over her knees so nothing showed when she sat down. She brushed her long hair over one shoulder with her good hand as she looked around the room. For a moment, Claire got lost staring at that fluid motion, that delicate wrist and fingers brushing against her soft hair and exposing her small ear and pale neck.

Dammit. Claire was such a sucker for pretty women. Whatever kept bringing the most attractive people on the planet to her doorstep was a mystery. However, knowing Claire’s luck this one would be just as much trouble as the last. Best to keep it professional.

Claire dampened a washcloth, gathered up her supplies, and sat down next to Karen. She soaked up some of the blood with the dry end, and cleaned up the edges with the wet. Then she unscrewed the cap of the peroxide, poured some in, and said, “I’m sorry. This is gonna hurt.”

Karen winced as the peroxide poured into the wound, but she didn’t cry out. Claire wiped away the foam, and put a large bandage over the cut. She handed a stack of bandages to Karen’s good hand and said, “Good as new. Make sure you change the bandages every few hours.”

“Ok. Thanks um. . .sorry I never asked for your name.”

“That’s alright. It’s Claire.”

“Claire,” said Karen, smiling as though the word tasted good in her mouth. “Thank you, Claire.”

“Any time,” spilled unbidden out of Claire’s mouth. And then, even worse, “Do you want something to eat since your cooking adventures went south? I have some leftover Chinese food in the house from earlier tonight.”

“Yeah that would be. . .that would be really nice. Thanks.”

So, that’s how Claire spent the next several hours. Trying not to stare at her neighbor as she ate, and then trying to to stare at her neighbor as they talked and talked, and trying to to stare at her neighbor’s butt as she walked down the hall and went into her own apartment.

Claire was doomed.

**********

Karen couldn’t stop thinking about Claire long after they had said their goodbyes. The touch of her fingers, firm with soft skin, lingered on her hand for days. The swish of her dark hair and her deep brown eyes, those perfect lips. . .Karen was such a sucker for pretty women and she had fallen right into a crush. Again.

After mulling over whether or not indulging her crush on a (probably straight) girl, she decided to say ‘fuck it’ and at least thank Claire with some gift of gratitude. And so, that’s how Karen ended up in the kitchen making her ‘husband catching’ (ha!) lasagna for her ridiculously gorgeous neighbor. 

When the lasagna was done and cool, Karen scooped up the glass pan with oven mitts, and headed over to Claire’s apartment. She steeled her nerves (just friendly lasagna, no reason to be nervous) and knocked on the door, hoping that her neighbor was actually home.

“Who is it?” said Claire.

“It’s Karen again. I brought you a thank you gift for fixing my hand.”

Claire unlocked and unlatched the door, a smile on her face. “Wow, Karen. Thanks. That smells amazing.”

“I didn’t even bleed in it,” said Karen. Claire cracked up.

“Thank God for that,” she said, taking the lasagna from Karen’s hands. “Come inside. We can eat it together.”

 


End file.
